SMART BUILDING TECHNOLOGY
‘Smarter’ buildings and the sustainability challenge
Ian Ellis, a ‘smart buildings’ specialist at Siemens Smart Infrastructure, explains why recent years’ heatwaves in the UK point to a new challenge – simultaneously mitigating the effects of climate change while dealing with the root cause of carbon emissions.
Last summer the UK truly felt the effects of climate change. While global warming has already caused extreme weather events around the world, some perhaps thought that the UK’s milder climate would mean we would be shielded from the effects. Our cooler weather and status as a developed economy does mean we are somewhat less affected, but recent 40 °C temperatures have shown we do have many infrastructure challenges ahead of us, particularly in our built environment. Frequent heatwaves will
Smart HVAC adjusts to patient preferences
Lighting sensors monitor patient presence and enable location tracking
Connected elevators enable predictive maintenance
Noise meters help patients sleep better and reduce noise fatigue
Circadian lighting directly impacts patient recovery and staff productivity
Medical devices can be tracked with RTLS tagging
Sensor-enabled LED lights notify hospital administrators what rooms are available
make building comfort harder to maintain. We also need to be careful not to exacerbate the root cause while doing so, by ensuring that carbon emissions are limited at the same time. For hospitals there is a fundamental need to ensure comfortable temperatures for patients and optimum working conditions for doctors and nurses. At the same time, how do you address opposing challenges of decarbonising for the future, and providing comfort for today, for a building as complex and energy-intensive as a hospital?
Patient controls room temperature, lighting, and blinds, from a smartphone
Staff efficiently track patients and equipment from a smartphone
Smart sensors and IOT-enabled infrastructure combined with XaaS models give hospitals better access to transformational digital technologies.
The fundamental shift in design Let us be clear, even if we meet climate goals, it’s still likely we’ll face extreme weather events. With the risk of the mercury hitting 40 °C every summer, we need to be conscious of this when designing new hospitals and refurbishing existing assets. We need to take learnings from countries around the world where battling this heat is a common occurrence, while also being mindful of the fact that we also have harsher winters than many hotter climates. A lot of the energy used in buildings
comes from either heating or cooling. Using the natural environment more
effectively in designing schemes could help hospitals to mitigate against heat. For instance, in hotter climates, buildings tend to be developed using natural cooling through shade, while building with thicker walls, and plenty of windows that are designed to create through-drafts, is common around the world. There is a lot we can learn from here. This could also have dramatic impacts on the costs of running heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems through summer. Considering that 80% of the building lifecycle costs occur in the operational phase of buildings, there is an opportunity to gain cost efficiencies here.
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Role of ‘smart buildings’ Equally, ‘smart buildings’ have a serious role to play – and when we say ‘smart buildings’, we can’t just mean delivering new-build developments. Refurbishment of heritage assets should also consider the Internet of Things and the use of data to bring them up to par. This technology can provide usage
data on the flow of people through a building, where they congregate, and how they use it. Data like this provides invaluable insights in optimising other technologies like heating and ventilation systems – for instance optimising their operation to provide maximum patient comfort at optimal cost
Lowering the upfront cost of technology deployment in this way gives hospitals far greater access to digital tools…
February 2023 Health Estate Journal 45
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